Special lecture: Chris Dercon

The 21st-century museum

Chris Dercon is the Director of Tate Modern, London, the most visited museum in the world, and, according to Dercon, 'an art movement by itself’. He arrived at the museum in 2011, as the power station’s former oil tanks were being transformed into large spaces dedicated to live art. The extraordinary Tate Tanks have added a dramatic new element to the museum’s highly regarded programming and advanced a new era in its development.

Prior to this appointment, Dercon, who is also an art historian and documentary filmmaker, had leading roles in the dynamic development and direction of other major international cultural institutions: PS1 in New York, The Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, as well as Haus der Kunst in Munich.

In this public lecture – the second in Kaldor Public Art Projects’ International Lecture Series – Dercon discusses his approach to the physical and social evolution of the 21st-century museum and reflects on the recent resurgence of performance art and its display within the Tate Tanks.